Why I support scare tactics to push social media

Think about fear for just a minute.
Is it always a bad thing? I would argue that it isn’t and what fear sometimes does is elicit courage, by default. Fear can make us find the biggest, brightest ideas of our lives. It can make us move faster, make quick decisions and throw caution to the wind.
Fear is a tool that, when used accordingly, can push us to greatness.

In my last post: Six ways to get social media buy-in from the boss, the underlying theme was scare the heck out of your boss if he or she keeps pushing off innovation and incorporating social media into the fabric of the organization. It was subtle in may ways, but present nevertheless. One of my suggestions was to accentuate the negative content found about the company through a Google search, and touting the social media efforts of competitors.

Richard Millington, a blogger I read regularly and respect a great deal, reminded me in the comments area that one should be wary of focusing solely on the negatives for participating in social media. He added: “I think it’s also important to have some great case studies from relevant industries, do some twitter searches for your industry’s subject matter and demonstrate how easy it is to reach so many poeple.”

Richard is right.

But some eggs are harder to crack than others. If you work for one of those eggs, you know what I’m talking about. So, consider fear as a tool and add it to your arsenal.

Show them that they are being left in the dust. Make them move faster, make quick decisions and throw caution to the wind.

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This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer.
Feel free to challenge me, disagree with me, or tell me I’m completely nuts in the comments section of each blog entry.

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2 comments

When I was in sales, my boss told me only two kinds of businesses buy product. Businesses that are growing and businesses that are dying. The principal behind that is simply – if a business is comfortable, they aren’t going to make decisions that change that comfort.

The same thing goes for Social Media. Fear is a good way to disrupt that comfort. With today’s economy, the fear factor is rampant. Using a controlled sense of fear and illustrate how Social Media will resolve these issues. But, it’s a fine line – and you have to know where the company is, where the decision makers are, and where you stand in everything.